Fast food workers are planning to take their protests to a new level Thursday as they take to the streets for the largest mass strike to date.

According to the New York Times, these protests will be different from previous protests in two ways. First, organizers are expanding their demonstrations’ locations, and participants. This time, protesters from both the fast food and health service industries will go on strike in 100 cities, and hold sit ins in over a dozen. Second, organizers plan to engage in and encourage civil disobedience as a way of getting the message out:

At a convention that was held outside Chicago in July, 1,300 fast-food workers unanimously approved a resolution calling for civil disobedience as a way to step up pressure on the fast-food chains.

“They’re going to use nonviolent civil disobedience as a way to call attention to what they’re facing,” said Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, which has spent millions of dollars helping to underwrite the campaign. “They’re invoking civil rights history to make the case that these jobs ought to be paid $15 and the companies ought to recognize a union.”

The SEIU is encouraging members of its health service union members to join protests in 6 of the 100 cities, hoping that diversifying participation will draw greater attention to the strikes.

These strikes are the result of a two year effort to force fast food chains to raise their minimum wage to $15 per hour, and to allow their employees to unionize. Earlier this summer the NLRB ruled to break through McDonald’s corporate-franchisee relationship in an attempt to conduct mass unionizations of entire chains all at once, as opposed to working through a company franchise by franchise. If that ruling is upheld by the courts, McDonald’s could be held liable for labor law violations at its thousands of locations.

CNN Money reports data suggesting that fast-food CEOs currently make 1,000 times more than the average worker in the industry, and that around 33% of fast food workers have spent at least some time in college. Additionally, 70% of fast food workers are over the age of 20, making it easy for organizers to quickly debunk arguments that “fast food jobs are for teenagers.” Whether or not that data holds true in the long run, union representatives are ready to emphasize the disparity between individual employee salaries and overall corporate profits as a way to whip up support.

During previous protests, the National Restaurant Association, the restaurant industry’s lobbying arm, has pointed out that only 5 percent of fast food workers earn the federal minimum wage and most employees earning entry-level wages are under 25. At least one fast food executives has claimed that a $15 per hour wage would kill jobs. It’s hard to say just how much a doubling of wages would affect menu prices because most individual fast-food locations are franchised to independent owners, whose financial data is private.

But strike organizers say these fast food chains can afford to share some of their large profits with workers. An analysis by TIME earlier this year found that profit margins for privately held fast-food businesses are on the rise. McDonald’s, the world’s largest fast food chain, had a $1.52 billion quarterly profit last quarter, up from $1.46 billion a year earlier. But same-store sales are flat for the fast food giant, which could lead to Wall Street pressure to lower costs, not increase them.

Unfortunately for organizers (and fortunately for corporations,) the effect of walkouts to date has been less fiscal and more fodder for media outlets looking for a social justice story.

Not only that but the level of disgustingly selfish unconcern for fellow workers who will lose their jobs to pay for a raise, God forbid, is nauseating. I’m old enough to remember about the days (not the days themselves but information about them) of the “family wage” when single men like me faithfully embraced a lower wage than family men because they cared about protecting families until some greedy sob who should have been beaten got a corrupt judiciary that should also have been beaten to rule against it for God knows what vile irrational excuse, thereby making wives wage slaves (together with WWII (& its aftermath) that I still question the validity of in view of the coverup of many cheerleaders of what actually happened with Allied incompetence and deceitful dealing) and tragically decimating the family, including vile Kinsey’s depraved bogus sodomite statistics (www.DrJudithReisman.org) lawless fascist filth still repeat ad nauseum. The godliness embraced by our godly Founders like Washington is ever at odds with the selfishness enslaving us today, most obnoxiously evident in the White House (& Reid & Pelosi et al & the SCOTUS. God save us. Soli Deo gloria!

McDonalds is certainly seeing this for what it is, just another shakedown attempt by unions on a corporation. Unions are bleeding members thru a ten inch gash across the belly caused by laws restricting public unions.

“Additionally, 70% of fast food workers are over the age of 20, making it easy for organizers to quickly debunk arguments that “fast food jobs are for teenagers.”

When and where unemployment is high, the median age of fast food employees will rise, filled by older workers laid off from their regular jobs. Teens find what they can.

So, the unions take advantage of Obama’s miserable economy to use fast-food workers as sympathic mules towards their true goal – union dues.

How about these fast food workers demand the SEIU start a company and hire them at an even better minimum wage of $20/hr.

Or why not ask the SEIU to give away the millions they rake in from dues to these punks so they can start their own business and pay themselves accordingly, free from the yoke of their capitalist master?

Who’s stopping them from originating and acquiring wealth on the free market?

“They’re going to use nonviolent civil disobedience as a way to call attention to what they’re facing,” said Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union

That’s how media articles are written – they’re copied from the mendacious slogans of leftist activists.

‘Nonviolent’ they won’t be. The union mobs always include some super-activists to bust things up for the cameras. Much as Islam is composed mostly of irrelevant nonviolent members who act pious while their military wing beheads the unbelievers, unions harbor their own thugs to wreak public havoc while the prim leaders sing ‘We Shall Overcome’, and send their legal staff to ensure non-punishment of the thugs.

Originally, civil disobedience was committed by those who were committed to serving jail time for their acts. Not any more.

The larger problem is that automation has reduced the value of work to the point where wages are failing as a way to distribute wealth. More wealth than ever but less access to it for most people means trouble.

State ownership of the means of production didn’t work out very well. Maybe we need a way to make everyone a trust fund baby?

From their perspective I think it makes sense. McD’s is going to lay them all off in the next few years anyways as it rolls out its new automated services. I don’t think they will even keep the cooks, just some cleaning staff. Even the notable exception to this, Starbucks will end up doing this. No more lawsuits, strikes, resume’s, just a friendly machine that makes your cup of coffee the right way and a table to sit at.

Fast food jobs teach a lot about efficiency and marketing, which kids can apply the rest of their life.

Government could award that young adult a $30,000 education loan, to PAY McDonald’s for the education. That would probably serve them better (and faster) than four years of expensive leftist reeducation from an intolerant university.

If Michael Brown had been able to work at McDonalds for $15 an hour he wouldn’t have NEEDED to rob a convenience store and wouldn’t have been executed by a racist cop. He would be around today working hard for a “living” wage!

The McDonald’s workers and other fast-food employees are being really short-sighted. They can, and will, be replaced. It’s already happening.

They should also be grateful they aren’t working at an actual restaurant as wait-staff. Waiters and waitresses don’t even get minimum wage; they’ll typically be paid a $3-$4 an hour base rate, with tips making up the difference to reach minimum wage. Granted, the employer (restaurant) is obligated to step in and subsidize wages if tips don’t achieve minimum level, but an employee who has that happen too frequently will be let go promptly for being ineffective. And it’s darned humiliating – having to suffer through whatever customers want to dish out, just to get the tip money that makes your efforts marginally profitable.

Ask the fast-food employees if they have any sympathy for their restaurant brethren, and if they’d like to be forced to work on the tip system as well.

The fast food places I go to, could easily pay more during the noon rush, or the evening rush. ( If they are near for example a mall or a theater. )

But I tend to come in during off hours. What I see there is a almost empty place, having to pay heating and electric along with staff salaries to take in what is probably less then $100/hr. Raise the minimum wage, and fast food places will start to close during those hours.

Who will that hurt? Night sift workers, who won’t find a cheap place to eat. Mostly blue collar people.

Chains and regional franchisees all suffer from poorly performing stores but they hesitate to close them because of the effect on future unemployment comp rates. When the SEIU convinces employees without union contract protection to refuse to report for work, these fools sacrifice their right to unemployment pay when fired and the unions will do nothing to help them secure their next job, simply because the fast food dummies are not paying dues.

This is beyond dumb. Mickey D’s has been honing its processes to allow them to employ the laziest, cheapest, most error-prone workers it can find. That’s why they developed clamshell boxes for their food, instead of paper wrappers, because the people they hired couldn’t reliably wrap a burger.

The next step is robots for the entire process, and they will do it. Then, who will hire their fast-off workers?

“McDonald’s, the world’s largest fast food chain, had a $1.52 billion quarterly profit last quarter,…”

Seriously? McDonald’s only makes about 6B a year? That company is enormous. It has a profit margin of 20%
Starbucks has a profit margin of 30%
Burger King has a profit margin of 28%
Taco Bell has a profit margin of about 8%